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Tea, Coffee, Cocoa, Etc

A method for preparing coffee, tea, or cocoa using a percolator.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Tea, Coffee, Cocoa, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven or heat in front of the fire for 1 minute.

  2. Scald the percolator coffee pot with boiling water.

Brew

  1. Fill the upper chamber of the percolator with the required amount of coffee powder and pack it down firmly.

  2. Pour boiling water over the coffee powder, adding it slowly for better extraction.

  3. Once the coffee has dripped through, pour it into cups.

  4. Keep the coffee pot in a shallow vessel of boiling water to maintain heat.

  5. For café au lait, pour boiling milk into the cups before adding coffee.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Coffee
Provides the main flavour and aroma once its soluble compounds are extracted by hot water.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the bitterness of the coffee in café au lait.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling water slowly over the coffee powder. Adding water slowly lets it saturate the grounds evenly so extraction is more uniform, avoiding a weak or unevenly flavoured brew.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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